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MELANKOLIWind(Khrysanthoney) cd 9.98The Khrysanthoney label returns after a bit of a break, with a barrage of new releases. Including this, the debut full length from Russian depressive black metal one man band Melankoli, whose sound is a perfect fit for Khrysanthoney, melding the downtuned dirge and melancholic creep of depressive black metal, with something much more lush and cinematic. The nearly 20 minute opener begins with lush synth swirls, strange field recordings, tinkling chimes, dramatic pianos, swirling FX, it almost sounds like M83, or some strange sci-fi soundtrack, the drums come in gradually, a spare, echo drenched pound, a deep dramatic spoken vocal, over a shimmery swirl of piano, total haunting shoegaze slo-mo blissout, swirling harmony vocals, wreathed in the sound of wintery winds, until finally, the guitars come cascading in, and the harsh vokills, but even then, they're paired with the more dreamy, dramatic sounds of the first few minutes, lilting and lovely, anguished and aching, epic and majestic, at times, the sound does grow dense and blackened, seriously heavy, but just as quickly, those moments dissipate, leaving soft synth swirls, or weirdly processed sprawls of electronic flecked drift, the programmed drums transformed into something much more trippy, before once again returning to the brooding, moody, cinematic churn, sprawling like the score for some end of the world epic. And while nothing else on the record is nearly as grandiose, the other four, shorter tracks here conjure up similarly stunning sonic moments, from the whispery electronic intro to "Embrace Of Winter", which runs throughout the whole song, giving it a weird electronic gloom pop, goth wave vibe, to the moody minimal blackened slowcore of "Coma", which should have Alcest / Amesouers fans in heaven, to the synth soaked sprawl of "Through The Shining Stars", which true to its title, sounds like the score to some super psychedelic sci-fi epic, images of huge expanses of space, of endless starfields, super melodic and darkly emotional, peppered with minimal percussion, and lilting electronic melodies, again, hard not to hear a little M83 (maybe M83's recent score for the movie Oblivion?). Melankoli finishes things off with a Death Aura cover, a weirdly epic, murky, moody death march dirge, the sounds blurred and washed out, the vocals a buried-in-the-mix demonic rasp, the melodies minor key and melancholic, a beautifully brooding bit of black buzz loveliness.LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Wind"MPEG Stream: "Embrace Of Winter"MPEG Stream: "Coma"

MELCHIOR, DANAssemblage Blues(Siltbreeze) lp 14.98Our only real exposure to Dan Melchior, frontman of the Broke Revue and sometime collaborator with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, was on a recent split with local garage poppers the Fresh & Onlys, and we were blown away, describing his side of the split as "awesomely super distorted garage pop, like Elvis Costello, all jammed up and slathered in crumbling hiss and grit, the vocals delivered in a thick English accent, the drums blown out, effects all over the place, everything buried beneath a patina of blurred buzz..." which pretty much describes Melchior's Siltbreeze record as well, but if anything, all the blown out weirdness and heavily effected and damaged aspects we dug so much on that 7", have been cranked WAY up here. Noisier, more lo-fi, way more chaotic and confusional, the proper songs that do surface are slathered in distortion and FX, and transformed into some sort of outsider lo-fi avant garage psych weirdness. "Atomizer" is some sort of no-fi distorto new wave, the whole song driven by a churning muddied electronic pulse, the vocals distorted and WAY up in the mix, robotic and clinical, but crumbling around the edges, pelted by jagged shards of blown out guitar, and squalls of cascading psychnoise, and the lyrics, twisted and appropriately baffling. "Bewildered And Wild" begins all folky and strummy, until the vocals come in, all processed and effected, making it sound like some alien blues, everything smeared with grit and grime and hiss, total interplanetary back porch moon blues weirdness, rife with the occasional super distorted swell of low end buzz. "Bread Bin Wailing (Moonlight Crow)" is all muted backwards warble, and ultra thick metallic bass buzz, echoey vocals, smears of psychedelic leads, and so it goes, the whole record some sort of drug addled bedroom blues, filtered through NZ noise rock, eighties cold wave, outsider loner zoner psych, and spit out in all its filthy fractured fucked up glory! Think Suicide crossed with Chrome crossed with the Shadow Ring crossed with Robyn Hitchcock crossed with Alastair Galbraith crossed Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Indeed.Comes with a download coupon too...
MPEG Stream: "Atomizer"MPEG Stream: "Bewildered and Wild"MPEG Stream: "Dugan"

MELCHIOR, DANC.C.D.E. Music( Little Big Chief ) lp 17.98This might be one of the weirdest (and coolest) records we've heard from Dan Melchior, which is saying a lot, considering how twisted and cool most of his records are, but this one just might take the cake, seeing as what is essentially a full lp, is really only three or four 'proper' songs, filled out by some seriously twisted sonic weirdness, which in some cases we dig even more than the songs themselves. The record opens with buzzing synths and garbled processed vox, a lurching distorto creep, all murky and warbly, which soon adds some acoustic guitar strum, and some weird samples, the sound constantly on the verge of blossoming into a 'real' song, but it's not until track three, that a 'proper' song coalesces from sonic murk, and even then, it's still pretty fucked up, skeletal programmed drums, jagged guitars, distorted bass chug, echo drenched vocals, a seriously lo-fi dirge, the vocals getting deep and dramatic, the song culminating in some wild, tripped out murk guitar shred. After that there's some minimal hushed shimmer, a sort of ambient interlude that leads directly into another weird dirgey jam, this one a bit more propulsive, but still plenty muddy and tranced out, psychedelic and trippy, laced with some awesomely twisted backwards vocals. The B side opens with some abstract, psychedelic drift, distant chordal shimmer peppered with weird synth blurts, which bleeds into some creepy minimal drone/thrum, sounding like whipping wind over distant barely there riffage, which erupts into another song, this one cool fuzzed out drum machine driven gloom pop, heavy guitar buzz, droney, noisy and super hypnotic. There's a brief crumbly lo-fi ballad, all Faxed Head production, dreaminess beneath squelch and glitch and hiss and hum, before the final jam, a detuned Beefheartian creep, angular and atonal, super noisy, ultra murky, the whole thing eventually devolving into some super cool, and seriously demented free form sample laced drift. Wow. So fucked up, and twisted and dementedly amazing!

MELCHIOR, DANExcerpts (& Half Speeds)(Kye) lp 17.98It may have taken us a while to catch on to the twisted garage rock genius that is Dan Melchior, but over the last little while, we've been digging everything we've heard, and while this record is not a proper album, so much as a cobbled together collection of experiments and sketches, it somehow holds together as some kind of strange Guided By Voices style chunk of micro-jams, albeit here, many of them consist of nothing but looped and layered voices or field recorded acoustic guitar. But all the tracks here, no matter how abstract or seemingly tossed off are pretty damn cool, whether it's the aforementioned vocal experiments, or sweet lo-fi piano ballads with strange foot-step percussion and a backdrop of running water, or stripped down bedroom folk with strange hummed harmonies, or dirgey distorted almost-Appalachia, warm swirls of acoustic guitars, minimal strums over mysterious field recordings or garbled into wild noisy tape experiments. And amidst all these fragments, do lurk a handful of gorgeous gems, both sides end in said fashion, the A side with a dense brooding, slow build dirge, the B side with a haunting bit of pretty reverbed piano over a swirl of strange stuttering electronics. Cool stuff.LIMITED TO 450 COPIES!!!

MELCHIOR, DANGhost In The Supermarket(Moniker) lp 14.98Yet another Record Store Day release, that we managed to get some extra copies of, so all our beloved, non-local customers could have a shot at snagging themselves a copy. This one from garage rock weirdo/legend Dan Melchior, a 5 song 45rpm 12" pressed up on white vinyl, that displays Melchior's poppier side, one we've got glimpses of before on other recordings, but barring one track, most of Ghost In The Supermarket is more sort of dark acoustic pop, with warm strum and simple arrangements, the opening title track sets the stage, with some fantastically twisted lo-fi pop, weirdly produced drums, lush acoustic guitars, and super bizarre lyrics, concerning the titular ghost and some Cheez Whiz, but Melchior manages to make the goofiness work, transforming what it lesser hands might have been too jokey, into a gorgeous chunk of low slung, stripped down acoustic pop, complete with a really nice, simple acoustic guitar solo. The second track is the oddball here, and gives us a glimpse of another side of Melchior's sound, one that's more post punky and garagey, angular and slithery, with jagged slashes of guitar, weird processed vox, very eighties sounding, catchy as hell, but also more rough and ragged than the rest of the record.The B side starts off with some woozy acoustic dirgery, spaced out and droney, darkly hypnotic before drifting into some abstract Appalachian alien folk territory, all plucked melodies, and keening high end shimmer, before slipping into the gorgeous closer, a sweetly sorrowful bit of classic sounding acid folk, all warm strum and shuffling tempo, twisted lyrics again (this time about Star Trek), laced with some rad psychedelic backwards guitars. Awesome stuff! And some super bad ass cover art. And again, this was a Record Store Day release, so odds are, once we sell out, we probably won't be able to get more.

MELCHIOR, DANHello, I'm Dan Melchior(Shake It) cd 13.98

MELCHIOR, DANK-85(Homeless) lp 14.98

MELCHIOR, DANRed Nylon Valance(SDZ) 7" 10.98We dug Melchior's most recent full length, Assemblage Blues, like crazy. It was a wild collection of garage pop, and really our first proper exposure to his noisy chaotic outsider songstyle. We played that record to death, so were super psyched to get in this new single, and it's a doozy, much darker and lower key than that record. The A side offers up moody brooding verses driven by a woozy low slung bassline, which explodes into a dizzying psychedelic organ driven chorus, the song super catchy, and maybe one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. The B side is another brooder, that sounds a little bit like a more fractured lo-fi Cardinal if that makes any sense, the same sort of stately pop vibe, but here it's all lush darkly dreamy vocal harmonies over dizzyingly looped guitar figures and has us reassessing what we said about the A side, cuz the B side is also one of our favorite Melchior jams yet. Guess that means this is most definitely recommended!
MPEG Stream: "Red Nylon Valance"

MELCHIOR, DANSlow Down Tiger(Starlight Furniture Company) lp 14.98Further down the rabbit hole goes Dan Melchior! Slow Down Tiger is the latest sonic adventure of continuously deconstructed pop for the occasional collaborator with the beloved chanteuse Holly Golightly. That said, for those looking to his lo-fi garage pop quirks, Melchior does have an album on Castle Face due out in the summer of 2014; but we gotta say that he can continue to produce these long-form weirdo collages for as long as he wants! "Tongues" rolls out with an eerie, hypnotic sitar-n-electronics loop that grounds a series of media samples / spoken word snippets from a variety of sources. The fine people down at the Starlight Furniture Company (you should really see their storefront on Mission Street in San Francisco, they really DO sell furniture! really cheap stuff, too!) have mapped out many of the sources including BBC broadcasts about poll tax riots in the UK less than three decades ago, as well as Russian and Chilean poets, obscure film clips, and some cultural lamp-lighters who shine their philosophies of curmudgeonliness and traditional lore on those who care to listen. As Melchior cuts the power on the tape loop machine, a ghostly guitar drift trickles through the shadows, dripping in equal parts with maudlin syrupiness, inky depression, and overdriven spring reverb. The vocal readymades continues to dot this landscape of guitar dronescape as dreamy allusions to those Delia Derbyshire dream-reciting experiments from the early '60s or the delightfully subversive tract of daytime soap collaged by Daniel Steven Crafts some 30 years ago. The flipside "Hospital Poem" is a desolate piece of lo-fi minimalism for chord organ and electronics, evolving into a heartbreaking, loner meditation that in all likelihood takes up the theme of Melchior's wife's cancer and her ongoing struggle with the disease. Great. Great. Great.
MPEG Stream: "Tongues"

MELCHIOR, DANThe Backward Path(Northern Spy) cd 14.98This latest full length from garage rock iconoclast/legend Dan Melchior is a definite departure from recent releases, in that not only is it the first solo record on which he doesn't play everything, and collaborates with a revolving cast / sort-of back up band, but also, it's much more song based, and somber, due in no doubt to the fact that his wife Letha (who played in the late great Ruby Falls, and is an amazing musician and artist in her own right, not to mention a super rad person!) was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, and the two have been struggling to deal with all the ramifications, from struggling to pay medical bills, to facing the mortality of a loved one. And it call comes through on the Backward Path, with Melchior as the brooding troubadour, the songs darkly melancholic, sweetly melodic, his distinctive croon wrapped in acoustic strum, and wreathed in a lush tapestry of atmospheric ambience, whirring drones, woozy lysergic shimmer, some of the tracks downright psychedelic, others spare and lovely, a stripped down garage pop psych folk that feels timeless, sonically, and emotionally, and of course, the whole record is musical love letter to his wife, which only makes it that much more beautiful and powerful.The other cool thing, is that the record's proper (love) songs are separated by short interludes, sonic experiments, reminiscent of Melchior's record on Kye, brief abstract tone poems, each a chunk of experimental psychedelic ambience, drifting guitar strums suspended in hazy blurred shimmers, soft swirls of FX, skeletal spirals of muted melody, all of which perfectly balance the songs proper. Way recommended. And of course, you can (and should!) donate to the Letha Rodman Melchior cancer fund: http://melchiorfund.blogspot.com/
MPEG Stream: "Night Comes In"MPEG Stream: "S.P. 2"MPEG Stream: "All The Clocks"MPEG Stream: "I Have Known The Emptiness"MPEG Stream: "S.P. 5"

MELCHIOR, DANThe Backward Path(Northern Spy) lp 17.98This latest full length from garage rock iconoclast/legend Dan Melchior is a definite departure from recent releases, in that not only is it the first solo record on which he doesn't play everything, and collaborates with a revolving cast / sort-of back up band, but also, it's much more song based, and somber, due in no doubt to the fact that his wife Letha (who played in the late great Ruby Falls, and is an amazing musician and artist in her own right, not to mention a super rad person!) was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, and the two have been struggling to deal with all the ramifications, from struggling to pay medical bills, to facing the mortality of a loved one. And it call comes through on the Backward Path, with Melchior as the brooding troubadour, the songs darkly melancholic, sweetly melodic, his distinctive croon wrapped in acoustic strum, and wreathed in a lush tapestry of atmospheric ambience, whirring drones, woozy lysergic shimmer, some of the tracks downright psychedelic, others spare and lovely, a stripped down garage pop psych folk that feels timeless, sonically, and emotionally, and of course, the whole record is musical love letter to his wife, which only makes it that much more beautiful and powerful.The other cool thing, is that the record's proper (love) songs are separated by short interludes, sonic experiments, reminiscent of Melchior's record on Kye, brief abstract tone poems, each a chunk of experimental psychedelic ambience, drifting guitar strums suspended in hazy blurred shimmers, soft swirls of FX, skeletal spirals of muted melody, all of which perfectly balance the songs proper. Way recommended. And of course, you can (and should!) donate to the Letha Rodman Melchior cancer fund: http://melchiorfund.blogspot.com/
MPEG Stream: "Night Comes In"MPEG Stream: "S.P. 2"MPEG Stream: "All The Clocks"MPEG Stream: "I Have Known The Emptiness"MPEG Stream: "S.P. 5"

MELCHIOR, DANThe Heron(Limited Appeal) lp 13.98While Dan Melchior is probably best known for his Broke Revue, and for playing with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, we've been digging his solo records quite a bit, the weirder the better, with the recent C.C.D.E. Music being the weirdest so far, at least until now. The Heron sports a sticker proclaiming this to be "more experimental" and is on a label called Limited Appeal. Couldn't be more appropriate cuz this stuff is pretty far out, freaky and psychedelic, but not like garage rock psychedelic, more sort of tripped out WTF? psychedelic, with much of the record sounding more like the Shadow Ring, with Melchior delivering deadpan spoken word in a thick English accent over all manner of strange noises, freeform fuzz and warped electronics. FX heavy percussion drives much of the record, that slips from tangled glitchy weirdness to space acoustic guitar strum to dirgy noisy psych to crunchy riffy plod, replete with fluttery woodwinds. Melchior's vocals are also sampled and sliced and diced and looped into the background music, adding still more weirdness, and his wife Letha delivers some spoken word as well, their vocals constantly tangled up and morphing back and forth. We're generally not huge fans of spoken word, but the Shadow Ring style vocals kinda sound cool here, especially with all the sonic weirdness going on in the background. There are bits of atmospheric ambience, and collaged textures, and some moments of truly sublime beauty, which do balance the more unhinged audio experiments, and free wheelin' abstract psychedeic freakouts. Stick around for the closer too, with its rad harmonized guitars and minor key melodies, buzzy and psychedelic and really super cool. LIMITED TO 231 copies, each one stickered and hand numbered. Housed in a diecut jacket, with a printed inner sleeve and printed insert.

MELCHIOR, DAN UND DAS MENACECatbirds & Cardinals(Northern Spy) cd 14.98We still really have no idea who this Dan Melchior guy is. We first discovered him via a split with SF jangle poppers the Fresh & Onlys, his side of the split a huge surprise, knocking us for a loop, and turning the previously unknown to us Melchior into a serious aQ fave. His recent lp for Siltbreeze Assemblage Blues only helped seal the deal, but where that record seemed custom made for Siltbreeze, seeming to tap into the twisted psychedelic side of Melchior's sound, and focusing on the noisier tripper more fucked up songs, this new one definitely sounds more in line with the tracks from that split single, a woozy, super melodic, shuffling, acoustic guitar flecked garage pop, hints of that classic sixties sound, plenty of weird distortion and lots of reverb, but here used sparingly, and in the interest of crafting an incredible collection of quirky lo-fi pop.Opener "Summer In Siberia" is fuzzy and jangly, with a perfect main melody, and a killer soaring sixties style chorus, the guitars warmly distorted and crumbly, Melchior's vocals delivered in a heavily accented British brogue, the production weirdly blown out and in-the-red, while the following track is a moody minor key chunk of quirky lo-fi outsider pop, super catchy, but strangely haunting and minor key. "Squalor On Sunday" is a pounding blast of psychedelic garage rock, with some super weird vocals, wheezing organs, crunchy guitars, all wound into a noisy blurred stretch of fuzzy washed out jangle. "Catbird" is a dour atonal dirge, the guitars careening from speaker to speaker, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe reminds us of Purling Hiss, the same sort of classic rock beholden hookiness, but here, but as beholden to the most twisted of the nineties NZ pop, and actually, much of the record sounds like it could be some long lost Xpressway or Flying Nun record from the nineties, total perfect pop, but all twisted up and turned inside out, creating a fuzzy dreamy din, all psychedelic and warped but without losing any of the poppiness or hookiness. Somehow this new full length manages to be the perfect mix of that poppy split single and the way weirder Siltbreeze record, resulting in a gloriously skewed, cacophonous fuzzy psychedelic garage pop masterpiece that we can't seem to stop listening to.
MPEG Stream: "Summer In Siberia"MPEG Stream: "The Forest Of Tin"MPEG Stream: "Squalor On Sunday"

MELCHIOR, DAN UND DAS MENACECatbirds & Cardinals(Northern Spy) lp 17.98We still really have no idea who this Dan Melchior guy is. We first discovered him via a split with SF jangle poppers the Fresh & Onlys, his side of the split a huge surprise, knocking us for a loop, and turning the previously unknown to us Melchior into a serious aQ fave. His recent lp for Siltbreeze Assemblage Blues only helped seal the deal, but where that record seemed custom made for Siltbreeze, seeming to tap into the twisted psychedelic side of Melchior's sound, and focusing on the noisier tripper more fucked up songs, this new one definitely sounds more in line with the tracks from that split single, a woozy, super melodic, shuffling, acoustic guitar flecked garage pop, hints of that classic sixties sound, plenty of weird distortion and lots of reverb, but here used sparingly, and in the interest of crafting an incredible collection of quirky lo-fi pop.Opener "Summer In Siberia" is fuzzy and jangly, with a perfect main melody, and a killer soaring sixties style chorus, the guitars warmly distorted and crumbly, Melchior's vocals delivered in a heavily accented British brogue, the production weirdly blown out and in-the-red, while the following track is a moody minor key chunk of quirky lo-fi outsider pop, super catchy, but strangely haunting and minor key. "Squalor On Sunday" is a pounding blast of psychedelic garage rock, with some super weird vocals, wheezing organs, crunchy guitars, all wound into a noisy blurred stretch of fuzzy washed out jangle. "Catbird" is a dour atonal dirge, the guitars careening from speaker to speaker, the vocals sung/spoken, the vibe reminds us of Purling Hiss, the same sort of classic rock beholden hookiness, but here, but as beholden to the most twisted of the nineties NZ pop, and actually, much of the record sounds like it could be some long lost Xpressway or Flying Nun record from the nineties, total perfect pop, but all twisted up and turned inside out, creating a fuzzy dreamy din, all psychedelic and warped but without losing any of the poppiness or hookiness. Somehow this new full length manages to be the perfect mix of that poppy split single and the way weirder Siltbreeze record, resulting in a gloriously skewed, cacophonous fuzzy psychedelic garage pop masterpiece that we can't seem to stop listening to.
MPEG Stream: "Summer In Siberia"MPEG Stream: "The Forest Of Tin"MPEG Stream: "Squalor On Sunday"

MELCHIOR, DAN UND DAS MENACEHunger(Castle Face) cd 13.98After the twisted avant collage experimentation of the recently released Slow Down Tiger lp, Dan Melchior returns to the garage rock sound he's more well known for, on this, his first for John Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and while it's not so nearly warped and way out as Slow Down Tiger, it's still pretty freaky. Sure there's crunchy jangly guitars, and actual proper song structures, but there's still all manner of weird noises, strange effects, some songs lurch to a stop, like in the strange spoken chorus to opener "A Wizard Doesn't Need A Computer", other tracks are rife with psychedelic popisms, like on "Night Of Fear", where Melchior is channeling sixties flower-poppers The Move, but filtered through a thoroughly fractured modern garage pop filter, and others are just straight up blown out old school garage rock pounders, like the urgent distorto crush of "Rip It To Pieces". Like on all the other Melchior records, he can't seem to deny his experimental side, so drum machines pop here and there, multiple vocal lines tangled into unlikely harmonies, riffs are blurred into extended distorted drones, reverb and echo are slathered on everything, but all of that weirdness is somehow corralled into the service of some seriously great songs, that most definitely do sound right at home on Castle Face.
MPEG Stream: "A Wizard Doesn't Need A Computer"MPEG Stream: "Night Of Fear"MPEG Stream: "Rip It To Pieces"MPEG Stream: "Robotic Footprints"

MELCHIOR, DAN UND DAS MENACEHunger(Castle Face) lp 15.98After the twisted avant collage experimentation of the recently released Slow Down Tiger lp, Dan Melchior returns to the garage rock sound he's more well known for, on this, his first for John Dwyer from Thee Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and while it's not so nearly warped and way out as Slow Down Tiger, it's still pretty freaky. Sure there's crunchy jangly guitars, and actual proper song structures, but there's still all manner of weird noises, strange effects, some songs lurch to a stop, like in the strange spoken chorus to opener "A Wizard Doesn't Need A Computer", other tracks are rife with psychedelic popisms, like on "Night Of Fear", where Melchior is channeling sixties flower-poppers The Move, but filtered through a thoroughly fractured modern garage pop filter, and others are just straight up blown out old school garage rock pounders, like the urgent distorto crush of "Rip It To Pieces". Like on all the other Melchior records, he can't seem to deny his experimental side, so drum machines pop here and there, multiple vocal lines tangled into unlikely harmonies, riffs are blurred into extended distorted drones, reverb and echo are slathered on everything, but all of that weirdness is somehow corralled into the service of some seriously great songs, that most definitely do sound right at home on Castle Face.
MPEG Stream: "A Wizard Doesn't Need A Computer"MPEG Stream: "Night Of Fear"MPEG Stream: "Rip It To Pieces"MPEG Stream: "Robotic Footprints"

MELCHIOR, LETHA RODMANHandbook For Mortals(Siltbreeze) lp 15.98The joy of reviewing this first proper full length from Letha Rodman Melchior is tempered by the sad fact that Letha passed away recently, after a lengthy battle with cancer. Beloved by all who knew her, she chronicled her illness via a hilarious and hilariously warts-and-all blog, detailing every facet of her illness, and her struggle to beat it. Musicians and artists and friends all over the world, rallied around her, playing benefit shows, to raise money to help with her hospital bills, and while she had been making art and playing music for decades (Andee's old band toured with her old band, Ruby Falls, way back in the nineties), her marriage to Dan Melchior, a musical force in his own right, brought forth a new bout of productivity and collaboration, culminating in this, the heartbreakingly beautiful, and fantastically fanciful handbook For Mortals, a joyously uninhibited collection of ultra personal musical vignettes, hauntingly lovely landscapes of piano and clarinette, laced with mysterious squalls of soft percussion, deep shimmery drones, whipping-wind-like swirls, breaking glass, a little bit chamber music, a little bit musique concrete, a series of strange sonic collages, fusing woozy, distorted, dream pop, to fractured avant murk, buried melodies and music box like warble. Some tracks unfurl lo-fi jumbles of found sounds, loopy percussion, swirling FX, others hushed, pastoral ambience, choral vocal harmonies and field recordings. The songs are laced with glitched out electronics, occasionally wrapped around stately piano threnodies, other times blossoming into wild sprawls of crumbling, distorted noise. Here and there, ramshackle ballads dissolve into equal parts hushed piano, recordings from the hospital (the beep of a life support machine surfaces on one track) and creaking machine like clatter. Handbook For Mortals is a heady, heavenly mix of twisted, mad scientist avant noise, and hushed, delicate, home brewed songcraft, a gorgeous bit of sound art, that has now been transformed into a beautifully bittersweet, and heartbreakingly poignant threnody.R.I.P Letha. You will be missed.
MPEG Stream: "Hypatia Rilles"MPEG Stream: "Mare Crisium"MPEG Stream: "Marsh Of Sleep"MPEG Stream: "Humouresques"

MELECHESHDjinn(Osmose) cd 15.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Ok, so American death metallers Nile might have the market for Egyptian-themed metal all to themselves. And they're damn good at it. But what about the rest of the Middle East? Well, the guys in Melechesh play "Mesopotamian Metal"! And, they actually hail from the region -- several of the band are Arab-Israelis, now living in Europe. It's really an international effort, as on Djinn they are joined by new drummer Sir Proscriptor McGovern of Texan black trashers Absu! Hopefully you all know about him and them (see elsewhere this list for a review of the incredible new Absu disc). With Proscriptor, Melechesh take their Arabian Nights metal to new heights. Kinda like those '60s Turkish psych bands did on that fab "Hava Narghile" comp reviewed last list, the Melechesh legions fuse traditional Arabic music with their chosen brand of rock, in this case, black metal. The combination works really well, 'cause they do it with such heaviness and intensity. One of their slower numbers, "A Summoning Of Ifrit And Genii", might be one of the best metal songs we've heard all year. So, the music's great, and the occultic Middle Eastern concept's cool. They even have a song called "Rub The Lantern" (Hehehe, what's that an euphemism for? the Beavises among you are thinking...no, it's a song about rubbing the lantern, literally). Recommended. And it's amazing how much this ends up sounding like a metal version of Dick Dale...
RealAudio clip: "Whispers From The Tower"RealAudio clip: "A Summoning Of Ifrit And Genii"RealAudio clip: "Oasis Of Molten Gold"

MELECHESHEmissaries(Osmose) cd 13.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Holy crap this band SLAYS. What (the death metal band) Nile are to Egypt, this black metal outfit is to Iraq... That is, Melechesh consider themselves to play "Mesopotamian metal", lyrically focused on the mythology and mysticism of ancient Sumer. Except that, moreso than Nile, the music of Melechesh more fully incorporates influences from the traditional folk musics of the Middle East. So they're kind of an extreme metal version of the '60s Turkish psych bands we love so much, the garagey fuzz guitars replaced with downtuned distorted METAL guitars, making bellydance music with blastbeats. And, unlike Nile who are Americans, the guys in Melechesh actually all originally hail from the region (they're Arabs, emigrated to Europe). Well, they used to have a Texan in the band, the illustrious occultic drumbeast known as Proscriptor (of Absu fame) but on this album he's been replaced with a new drummer, Xul. Proscriptor's a tough act to follow but this Xul guy manages to do so quite well! Wow.We've raved about 'em before, so hopefully you've already got some Melechesh in your collection and are as excited as we are about this new release, which is from the get-go a raging maelstrom of vicious riffage and masterful metal composition. Crushing AND catchy, technical, and very very METAL, yet with that extra Middle Eastern X-factor that makes it even better in our book, and allows the band to slow down for extra-ethnic, atmospheric interludes like "The Scribes Of Kur". Really, there's nothing we can find fault with here at all. A seriously great Middle Eastern metal assault, which even includes a cover of a song by a (Middle Eastern influenced) Canadian pop band, The Tea Party, weirdly, and cooly, enough. It's a shame that it's impossible to think about the ancient cultures and traditions of Middle East, and Iraq in particular, that Melechesh drawns such inspiration from, without of course dwelling on the current fucked up situation there, which sadly hasn't gotten any better since the release of Melechesh's last album back in 2003...
MPEG Stream: "Rebirth Of The Nemesis"MPEG Stream: "Deluge Of Delusional Dreams"

MELECHESHEmissaries(Osmose Productions) lp 21.00THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Now available on vinyl!!Holy crap this band SLAYS. What (the death metal band) Nile are to Egypt, this black metal outfit is to Iraq... That is, Melechesh consider themselves to play "Mesopotamian metal", lyrically focused on the mythology and mysticism of ancient Sumer. Except that, moreso than Nile, the music of Melechesh more fully incorporates influences from the traditional folk musics of the Middle East. So they're kind of an extreme metal version of the '60s Turkish psych bands we love so much, the garagey fuzz guitars replaced with downtuned distorted METAL guitars, making bellydance music with blastbeats. And, unlike Nile who are Americans, the guys in Melechesh actually all originally hail from the region (they're Arabs, emigrated to Europe). Well, they used to have a Texan in the band, the illustrious occultic drumbeast known as Proscriptor (of Absu fame) but on this album he's been replaced with a new drummer, Xul. Proscriptor's a tough act to follow but this Xul guy manages to do so quite well! Wow.We've raved about 'em before, so hopefully you've already got some Melechesh in your collection and are as excited as we are about this new release, which is from the get-go a raging maelstrom of vicious riffage and masterful metal composition. Crushing AND catchy, technical, and very very METAL, yet with that extra Middle Eastern X-factor that makes it even better in our book, and allows the band to slow down for extra-ethnic, atmospheric interludes like "The Scribes Of Kur". Really, there's nothing we can find fault with here at all. A seriously great Middle Eastern metal assault, which even includes a cover of a song by a (Middle Eastern influenced) Canadian pop band, The Tea Party, weirdly, and cooly, enough. It's a shame that it's impossible to think about the ancient cultures and traditions of Middle East, and Iraq in particular, that Melechesh drawns such inspiration from, without of course dwelling on the current fucked up situation there, which sadly hasn't gotten any better since the release of Melechesh's last album back in 2003...
MPEG Stream: "Rebirth Of The Nemesis"MPEG Stream: "Deluge Of Delusional Dreams"

MELECHESHEpigenesis(Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98Good grief, but Melechesh certainly makes it tough for other 'extreme' metal bands to compete. If it wasn't enough that they're masters of razor sharp, ripping blackened deathly thrashy metal, they've also got the Middle Eastern thing going for 'em. Not just lyrically (they're into Mesopotamian mythology) but musically as well this has Middle Eastern motifs, heck there's even some bouzouki on here, and you know how much we like Middle Eastern influenced rock music, all that '60 Turkish psych stuff, well this is the modern metal equivalent! Plus these guys are a lot "closer to the source" than, say, those Egyptology obsessives in Nile, who are Americans. Melechesh are Palestinian Arabs, originally from Israel, and this album was recorded at a studio in Istanbul. It's been four years since their last album, the amazing Emissaries, and they haven't changed much, except to get even better if possible. These songs are, as always, both crushing and catchy, as well as mystically, "magickally" atmospheric... mesmerizingly so, via the heaving heaviness of such tracks as "The Magickan And The Drones" (the magick wins out), full of sinuous, serious, seasawing riffage that leaves us utterly hypnotized. Elsewhere, the blazing fast battery does the same trick. Yet another AQ-approved aspect of Melechesh is how fist-pumpingly metal they manage to be, showing that their Middle Eastern sound might also have something to do with Iron Maiden's "Powerslave"!Definitely for fans of Absu (whose Proscriptor was in fact a Melechesh member for a while), with whom they share some similarities of sound and vision; also of course the aforementioned Nile (though those guys are much more death metal) and Morbid Angel (who also are inspired by ancient Sumer). For another concocted comparison, imagine Dissection with a Middle Eastern makeover, maybe. Highly recommended, this pushes a lot of buttons for us, definitely gonna be a major contender for 2010 top tens. Like we said, when you're listening to this, it's hard to see what else could compete. Comes packaged in a digipak, with suitably esoterically evocative artwork.
MPEG Stream: "Grand Gathas Of Baal Sin"MPEG Stream: "Sacred Geometry"MPEG Stream: "Mystics Of The Pillar"

MELECHESHSphynx(Osmose) cd 14.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Those crazy "Mesopotamian" metallers Melechesh are back, following up their last album, Djinn, considered a best of 2002 metal release 'round here, with this equally killer collection of tunes. The band consists of two Arab-Israelis now living in Europe and, perhaps the key to how Melechesh has become such a force to be reckoned with, percussion perfectionist Proscriptor of Texas black thrashers Absu. Dunno how they get together to practice or write songs, but whatever they do seems to work! As on Djinn, they meld traditional Middle Eastern music with black/death metal, kind of like an extreme update of the way those "Turkish Delights" garage-psych bands did it. They take their influences seriously -- in fact there's an enhanced portion of the cd that will fill your computer screen with lengthy explanations of their musicology, complete with guitar tabulature, drum beat analysis, and even pictures of the "oriental" instruments used alongside the usual electric guitars, bass and drums on the album! Then again, this is also state of the art metal. Sphynx is crammed with riffs, complex detail, constant changes, the utmost in headbanging tech. Totally adrenalized, thrashy and catchy. Fans should happily note that this includes their awesome track from the last Osmose World Domination sampler. Oh, and in case you're wondering, we found no overt references to the war in Iraq. These guys are more interested in ancient supernatural stuff than they are in our less-than-mystical world of strife.
MPEG Stream: "Tablets Of Fate"

MELEEViolent Forms Of Laughter Pt. 2(Arbor) cassette 5.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Ultra underground noisemakers Graveyards have a bunch of stuff out, all of it so limited none of it has made it into AQ, BUT, we managed to get a little handful of these, the most recent release from Melee, who as far as we can tell is the rhythm section of Graveyards with some added man power on trumpet(!).Won't get into it too much as we only have a few of these, but Melee, are pretty great, doing a sort of abstract ambient thing, weird little electronic squiggles, distant hums and rumbles, low end drones and streaks of static and tape hiss, disembodied melodies and melodic fragments, drifting amidst slow shimmering soundscapes of ultra minimal buzz and throb. It's actually pretty dreamy, and as the band sort of blisses out, it does sort of sound like some VERY minimal abstract Taj Mahal Travellers thing, abstract and organic, simple, but rife with layers of sound and constantly shifting overtones. Some serious, super abstract, minimal psych dronedrift for sure. Packaged in hand painted soft plastic tape cases, with paste on hand screened artwork, with a photocopied insert, each tape also with screened label and hand painted. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. We have 5 or 6...

MELENCOLIA ESTATICAHel(Temple Of Torturous) cd 14.98This is the first we've heard from this one woman black metal band, the work of a single entity almost comically named Climaxia, but there's nothing comical about Hel, an epic and super progressive slab of experimental atmospheric black metal. Inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, this six part songsuite finds ME weaving an impossibly lush landscape of black buzz, industrial murk, dreamy almost psychedelic ambience, part one pretty much lays it all out, loping black metal, more muddy and washed out than buzzy, giving the whole thing a seriously dreamlike quality, the sound sound shifts, and splinters into a strange soaring blackened majesty, with some insanely deep demonic bellowed vokills, which get processed and transformed into clouds of hisses and whispers, before the buzz peels away, leaving clean guitar, murky drumming, a sky full of tangled voices, the sound super cinematic and WAY creepy, and then in swoop some angelic clean female vox, the effect choral, almost liturgical really, the sound seeming to grow more and more abstract, more psychedelic, the metal elements disappearing in a cloud of druggy FX heavy swirl. But we're still only partway through, the sound explodes into a grinding gout of heaviness, before once again transforming into a sort of gloomy dirge rock, the vocals now a throaty croon, haunting and heavy.The second track begins in full black metal buzz mode, but again, the timbre and quality of the sound makes it much more dreamy and tranced out, those growled demonic vokills the only thing making it sound truly black metal, and even here, after a minute, the sound devolves into a stretch of clean guitar drift, before launching into another blast of blackness. The whole record, while heavy on the black buzz, spends much of its time drifting through fields of psychedelic shimmer, distant buzz, and slow, dirgey atmospheric creeps, and it's those interludes and non-metal parts that seem to seep into the blacker buzzier parts, transforming them into something much more moody and melancholic, not to mention all sorts of strange effects, warble guitars, twisted harmonies, dubbed out drumming, each song imbued with a sort of soft cacophony, that constantly threatens to overtake the black buzz, and often gloriously does!Packaged in a super swank black and gold six panel embossed digipak...
MPEG Stream: "I"MPEG Stream: "II"MPEG Stream: "III"

MELKThe G6-49(Joyful Noise) cd 14.98From the Joyful Noise Label:All the traditional melodies and musical conventions have been stripped away leaving the bare bones of an epic noise-rock opus. It is relentless, it's loud, it's mathy, it's symphonic without being rigidly structured. I'm not sure that melk could properly be considered a 'noise' band, because this is not shapeless distortion. Beneath the pirouetting curlicues of feedback and the convulsive pulse of the drums--there is a geometry and there is a message.

MELLE, GILThe Andromeda Strain(Intrada) cd 30.00THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.The Andromeda Strain was Michael Crichton's first book published under his own name, and told the story of a military probe returning to Earth bearing a lethal, microscopic virus, that proceeds to wiped out an entire New Mexico town, as scientists frantically try to devise a way to destroy the ever mutating virus, eventually considering detonating a nuclear bomb, sacrificing their lives to destroy this insidious interloper. The book was a huge success, as was the movie that followed, retaining the book's documentary-like vibe, hiring unknown actors as well as using graphic footage of virus victims dying. Long a cult favorite, the movie was most notable to music geeks for two reasons, its trippy electronic musique concrete score, and that score's original lp release, which found the record housed in a cool octagonal sleeve, mirroring a recurring shape in the film. The music, composed by Gil Melle, is incredible, minimal and abstract, but haunting and ominous, even removed from the visuals, it's a harrowing listen, much of it performed on an instrument called the Percussotron III, the FIRST instrument ever designed and built specifically for a film score, some sort of primitive synthesizer we'd assume, percussive as well judging by the name, but details and history aside, this is just a simply fantastic piece of music. Strange electronic chirps, ominous low end thrums, helicopter like whirs, deep swirling drones, spidery squiggly high end melodies, blooping and bleeping glitch skitter, some mechanical percussion, plucked strings, crunchy buzzing swells, haunting bell like tones, militaristic snares, clipped and truncated scrapes and bleats, moaning strings, shimmering synth buzz, tinkling piano, clouds of music box like chirps and whistles, blurred and smeared into a whirling cloud of intertwined sine wave tones, grinding rumbles over swirling streaks of hiss, chromatic melodies unfolding into atonal shards of jagged crumbling sound, cool stuttery machine like rhythms over tangles of bass warble and clouds of glitch, and huge psychedelic swirls of interlocking prismatic tones, all the various elements woven into a truly otherworldly soundtrack. One that sounds like some legendary lost musique concrete artifact, as much as it does a chunk of kitschy sci-fi weirdness, when in fact it's most definitely both. Unfortunately this reissue doesn't replicate the awesome octagonal packaging, but it makes up for it with a massive booklet, featuring tons of photos, liner notes about the movie, the soundtrack, the composer, each individual song, as well as all of the original lp liner notes. So awesome. We'd been waiting for a proper reissue of this FOREVER. So totally recommended, sorry it's not cheaper...
MPEG Stream: "Wildfire"MPEG Stream: "Hex"MPEG Stream: "Andromeda"MPEG Stream: "Desert Trip"

MELLOW CANDLESwaddling Songs(Esoteric Recordings) cd 21.00

MELLOW GRAVESmoke Filled the Room, We Slept(Living Tapes) lp 15.98Originally released as a super limited cassette, this killer chunk of witch house gets the deluxe vinyl treatment, and fuck the haters out there, it sounds as good as ever. Again, it bears repeating that for a genre that seemed to be born, get WAY too popular, and then incur a ridiculous backlash in such a short amount of time, the number of ACTUAL releases is surprisingly low, with most of the tracks released as cd-r's or mp3's or on SoundCloud or whatever, which is kind of a bummer, cuz as much as popular opinion may have turned, we still love this sound. The thick gloomy synths, the skittery crunk like beats, the chopped and screwed vocals, the doomy psychedelic ambience, all woven into some weird sort of grim gloomy electro, which appropriately goes by many genre names, drag, grave rave, zombie rave, cave rave, but you know what, we're fine with witch house. And really, if you dug the Salem (and really how could you not?!), then this will definitely push those same buttons. Not nearly as M83 blown out shoegaze pop (although there are some very M83 moments), and minus the rapping, Mellow Grave while sonically similar in many ways, definitely have their own take on WH, which is more of a gloomy new wave pop, infused with all the above mentioned elements, we hear bits of Joy Division for sure, New Order, Cold Cave, seems like adventurous fans of those bands might dig this as well. Industrial percussion, wheezing ominous synths, rhythmic stutter and skitter, warm deeply crooned vocals, loads of psychedelic effects, the songs usually crawl and creep, but when the tempo gets cranked, the frantic vibe is pretty exhilarating.The opening track might still be our fave, with its horror movies synths over drum machine skitter and deep rumbling bass buzz, it's easy to imagine this as some sort of modern John Carpenter influenced composition for some crazed art flick, and then the vocals come in, and becomes some sort of dour witchy synth pop, laced with all manner of tangled melodies, and clipped and looped voices buried in the mix, haunting and hooky and so great. The second track is just as cool, sacrificing the thick low end heaviness for some killer stuttery industrial beats, that wind around more crooned vox and cool hooky distorted synth melodies that almost sound like some weird guitar buzz, the whole thing peppered with these machinegun like blasts of percussion. So killer. Recommended for fans of any of the current crop of new / cold / synth / electro wave, and obviously anyone who digs Salem, Balam Acab, Mater Suspiria Vision and all the rest, this is most definitely your new favorite record.
MPEG Stream: "Oxygen"MPEG Stream: "Melatonin"MPEG Stream: "Amphibian"MPEG Stream: "Burn One"

MELLOWHYPEBlackenedwhite(Fat Possum) cd 13.98Mellowhype is the latest subversive sonic missive from the uber hyped Odd Future hip hop crew, which finally shines the spotlight on some of the other members after Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt getting most of the love up until now. But Mellowhype, aka Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, were in fact responsible for much of the production on those records, but unlike the spare sketelal horrorcore creep of Tyler's Goblin, and the stripped down minimal thump of Earl's jams, the sound of Mellowhype is much more lush, but no less twisted, what on the surface sounds like radio ready hip hop, seems to melt before your ears, sounds changing pitch, beats slowing down and speeding up, vocals constantly shifting, the sound peppered with glitches and tape dropouts, the melodies warped and woozy, it's the kind of shit that SHOULD be all over the radio, it's got all the elements required, but fortunately for us, that stuff is filtered through Odd Future's cracked perception of hip hop, and comes out the other end all mangled and fantastically fucked up. After hearing this we imagine it's only a matter of time before big hip hop names start tapping these guys for remixes, or even just for beats, cuz these guys have crafted a serious slab of WTF here, a dizzying hybrid of purposefully problematic Odd Futurisms melded to surprisingly hooky hip-pop, and irresistible melodies, some killer flows, ominous loops, beats that slip from Southern crunkified skitter, to pounding black rocking crunch, resident Odd Future RnB-er Frank Ocean even drops in for a bit of crooning, and in true OF fashion his swoonsome hook is set amidst a jumble of warbly synths, hiccupping beats, and some damaged confusional lyrics. Awesome stuff. More than lives up to the hype.
MPEG Stream: "Primo"MPEG Stream: "Gunsounds"MPEG Stream: "Brain"MPEG Stream: "64"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRCorollaries(Erased Tapes) cd 17.98Lubomyr Melnyk is one of our favorite modern composers. The inventor and master of the Continuous Music technique, which has made him the Guinness-recognized fastest piano player in the world. But was we mentioned in other reviews, this speed and mastery is deftly employed, to create lush clouds of billowing chordal shimmer, the sort of dreamlike divine sound that should have Melnyk spoken about in the same sort or reverential tones reserved for legends like Reich and Riley and Palestine. Melnyk's method involves keeping the pedals on the piano depressed, allowing notes to ring out, bleed into each other, creating lush expanses of constantly shifting overtones, sounds layered and bleeding into one another, creating huge swaths of organic sound, a sound that seems to be alive, full of energy and emotion, not just Melnyk's technique, but his compositions as well, a true master who has created some of the most amazing modern piano music we've ever heard. The sad thing is that his records are quite difficult to find, and the fact that he has composed so many pieces, and his interest is in allowing people to hear as much of his music as possible, most of those records exist only as cd-r's. But gradually, it seems, interest in Melnyk has been growing, we've certainly been doing everything we can, constantly proselytizing, telling everyone we know about Melnyk and his music, reviewing them on our list, and getting as much of his music as we can into the ears of folks we think need to hear it, which we think is many of you. So we're super excited whenever one of his records gets a proper worldwide release, and thus, we were thrilled when we first heard about Corollaries. Which besides being one of the few non-cd-r Melnyk releases, is also of note as it's the first collaboration we've heard from him. Even on past records where multiple pianos were used, Melnyk played all the parts. But here, Melnyk is joined by Peter Broderick and Martin Heyne, who give Melnyk's music an interesting, sort of washed out gauzy production, which really suits the sound, but beyond that, also contribute synthesizer, violin and vocals! We weren't at all sure what to expect, but were actually quite pleasantly surprised. The opener here "Pockets Of Light" finds us in familiar territory, with Melnyk laying down a lush landscape of swirling notes, and lush chordal shimmer, and as we (and many of you) know by now, that's all we really need, Melnyk and his Continuous Music method are more than enough to fill the speakers, and your headphones and your ears with a wild field of sound, one that is so easy to get lost in, but here, the addition of violin, adds a fantastic element, a bit of a drone, and a melodic counterpoint, also complimented by the dreamlike production, we were pretty skeptical about the vocals, but when they come in, the sound is transformed into a gorgeous, shimmery sort of slowcore, Broderick's vocals high and clear, warm and emotional, drifting atop, Melnyk's lush landscape of chordal swirl, the more we listen, the more we realize we actually might have liked more of the songs to have vocals. Imagine Low with clouds of piano shimmer and you might be close. Divine and dreamlike and utterly mesmerizingly lovely. "The Six Day Moment" is Melnyk solo, and is a delight of course, a dense, intricate classical music, that almost sounds like multiple players, but it's never too busy, or too chaotic, it's instead lush and lovely, melodic and moving, lyrical and haunting, we could listen to Melnyk play forever, and listening to this, we begin to wonder why someone hasn't asked him to score their film, the sound so evocative and cinematic, epic and intense. "A Warmer Place" finds Broderick returning again, this time playing violin, Melnyk's playing spare and minimal, demonstrating, that it's not just about speed or notes, lots of space, ambient and ethereal, Broderick's minimal melodies perfectly underpinning Melnyk's delicate crystalline arrangements, wintery and wonderfully melancholy. "Nightrail From The Sun" might be the biggest surprise here, with its casual conversation laced false start, to the hypnotic piano/guitar interplay, some serious Reich/Riley style melodic mesmer going on here, Broderick adding some heft and background color via synth, but for the most part, it's the interplay between Melnyk's piano and Martyn Heyne's guitar that makes this so stunning, and like the other tracks, we find ourselves wishing for a whole record of this. And when Broderick amps up the synth, the sound becomes super dramatic, almost Godspeed-like in its brooding intensity. In many ways, it's like an even more intricate avant version of the recent collaboration between Melnyk and James Blackshaw. And finally, the record finishes off with another Melnyk / Broderick duet, this one with a distinctly mournful almost country feel, the violin unfurling an aching minor key melody, while Melnyk underpins Broderick's violin, with sweetly understated piano, the sound building to something extremely emotional and moving, again, evoking all sorts of images and emotions, and again making us wonder why Melnyk and Broderick aren't scoring films, the closer so cinematic, and expressively cinematic, lush and so so lovely. Like everything we've heard from Melnyk, and absolute treasure, and a fantastic collaboration, that we hope will inspire many more, and will finally get the rest of the world to discover what we already know, that Melnyk is a genius. This record is simply more proof of that.
MPEG Stream: "Pockets Of Light"MPEG Stream: "The Six Day Moment"MPEG Stream: "Nightrail From The Sun"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRCorollaries(Erased Tapes) 2lp 34.00Lubomyr Melnyk is one of our favorite modern composers. The inventor and master of the Continuous Music technique, which has made him the Guinness-recognized fastest piano player in the world. But was we mentioned in other reviews, this speed and mastery is deftly employed, to create lush clouds of billowing chordal shimmer, the sort of dreamlike divine sound that should have Melnyk spoken about in the same sort or reverential tones reserved for legends like Reich and Riley and Palestine. Melnyk's method involves keeping the pedals on the piano depressed, allowing notes to ring out, bleed into each other, creating lush expanses of constantly shifting overtones, sounds layered and bleeding into one another, creating huge swaths of organic sound, a sound that seems to be alive, full of energy and emotion, not just Melnyk's technique, but his compositions as well, a true master who has created some of the most amazing modern piano music we've ever heard. The sad thing is that his records are quite difficult to find, and the fact that he has composed so many pieces, and his interest is in allowing people to hear as much of his music as possible, most of those records exist only as cd-r's. But gradually, it seems, interest in Melnyk has been growing, we've certainly been doing everything we can, constantly proselytizing, telling everyone we know about Melnyk and his music, reviewing them on our list, and getting as much of his music as we can into the ears of folks we think need to hear it, which we think is many of you. So we're super excited whenever one of his records gets a proper worldwide release, and thus, we were thrilled when we first heard about Corollaries. Which besides being one of the few non-cd-r Melnyk releases, is also of note as it's the first collaboration we've heard from him. Even on past records where multiple pianos were used, Melnyk played all the parts. But here, Melnyk is joined by Peter Broderick and Martin Heyne, who give Melnyk's music an interesting, sort of washed out gauzy production, which really suits the sound, but beyond that, also contribute synthesizer, violin and vocals! We weren't at all sure what to expect, but were actually quite pleasantly surprised. The opener here "Pockets Of Light" finds us in familiar territory, with Melnyk laying down a lush landscape of swirling notes, and lush chordal shimmer, and as we (and many of you) know by now, that's all we really need, Melnyk and his Continuous Music method are more than enough to fill the speakers, and your headphones and your ears with a wild field of sound, one that is so easy to get lost in, but here, the addition of violin, adds a fantastic element, a bit of a drone, and a melodic counterpoint, also complimented by the dreamlike production, we were pretty skeptical about the vocals, but when they come in, the sound is transformed into a gorgeous, shimmery sort of slowcore, Broderick's vocals high and clear, warm and emotional, drifting atop, Melnyk's lush landscape of chordal swirl, the more we listen, the more we realize we actually might have liked more of the songs to have vocals. Imagine Low with clouds of piano shimmer and you might be close. Divine and dreamlike and utterly mesmerizingly lovely. "The Six Day Moment" is Melnyk solo, and is a delight of course, a dense, intricate classical music, that almost sounds like multiple players, but it's never too busy, or too chaotic, it's instead lush and lovely, melodic and moving, lyrical and haunting, we could listen to Melnyk play forever, and listening to this, we begin to wonder why someone hasn't asked him to score their film, the sound so evocative and cinematic, epic and intense. "A Warmer Place" finds Broderick returning again, this time playing violin, Melnyk's playing spare and minimal, demonstrating, that it's not just about speed or notes, lots of space, ambient and ethereal, Broderick's minimal melodies perfectly underpinning Melnyk's delicate crystalline arrangements, wintery and wonderfully melancholy. "Nightrail From The Sun" might be the biggest surprise here, with its casual conversation laced false start, to the hypnotic piano/guitar interplay, some serious Reich/Riley style melodic mesmer going on here, Broderick adding some heft and background color via synth, but for the most part, it's the interplay between Melnyk's piano and Martyn Heyne's guitar that makes this so stunning, and like the other tracks, we find ourselves wishing for a whole record of this. And when Broderick amps up the synth, the sound becomes super dramatic, almost Godspeed-like in its brooding intensity. In many ways, it's like an even more intricate avant version of the recent collaboration between Melnyk and James Blackshaw. And finally, the record finishes off with another Melnyk / Broderick duet, this one with a distinctly mournful almost country feel, the violin unfurling an aching minor key melody, while Melnyk underpins Broderick's violin, with sweetly understated piano, the sound building to something extremely emotional and moving, again, evoking all sorts of images and emotions, and again making us wonder why Melnyk and Broderick aren't scoring films, the closer so cinematic, and expressively cinematic, lush and so so lovely. Like everything we've heard from Melnyk, and absolute treasure, and a fantastic collaboration, that we hope will inspire many more, and will finally get the rest of the world to discover what we already know, that Melnyk is a genius. This record is simply more proof of that.
MPEG Stream: "Pockets Of Light"MPEG Stream: "The Six Day Moment"MPEG Stream: "Nightrail From The Sun"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRKMH(Unseen Worlds) cd 15.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Ever since we heard Wave-Lox, possibly the most famous piece by composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, we were totally smitten. The sound an impossible mashup of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. A modern reimagining of the minimalist tradition, with his Continuous Music system developed over years and years, finding inspiration in harmony and expressing it through fluidity and virtuosity, dense flurries of notes. Later, the playing would become faster, even setting a world record, but always at the core of Melnyk's sound, was harmony and melody and simple beauty. It's appropriate that KMH is the first actual Melnyk cd ever released (all the rest have been cd-r's) as this was his first actual recording. After years of perfecting this new technique, KMH was finally released in 1978, and while reminiscent of Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, it was something entirely new. Sound based on the movement of dancers, the music of moving and standing still all at once. For those of you familiar with other Melnyk discs we reviewed, the sound here, while notably different, will at once be quite familiar, the main difference being that the sound is not so dense, there are not so many notes, the playing is not quite as fast, instead, it's deeper, and slower and almost dreamier, still warm and magical, but like a slowed down, relaxed version of Wave-Lox. Almost more traditionally twentieth century sounding, but at the same time, still wonderfully unique, and much more emotionally resonant than much modern minimalism. For those who have yet to experience the amazing sounds of Lubomyr Melnyk, this is the perfect introduction, the first recorded instance of his Continuous Music, a technique involving continuos melodies, constant playing up and down the keyboard, with the pedals constantly depressed, allowing the notes to ring out and drift into one another, the various notes and overtones blending and beating, creating strange and mysterious harmonies. Little fluttering clouds of notes drift in weightless swirls, like dust motes in beams of sunlight. It's like the musical equivalent of a snowglobe, notes drifting and floating everywhere, forming shapes, and then just as quickly turning back into separate notes again, the sound both wintry and warm, dreamily dizzying and serenely soothing. So totally captivating. A glorious glimpse into the formative stages of one of our favorite modern composers. Packaged with all new artwork, new liner notes, photos, and the original liner notes from the original release.
MPEG Stream: "One"MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRLegend and Song of Galadriel(Bandura) cd-r 16.98The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site for more about Melnyk and Continuous Music, because while The Song Of Galadriel employs similar technique, the results are a bit different.It's hard to know what to say about this piece. On first listen it is much more traditionally classical sounding than Melnyk's other works, but according to the liner notes it is "one of the composer's most deeply personal and melodic works so far", and one can almost hear that in the music. Much darker, with much more attention paid to the lower registers, giving the piece a dark and ominous feel. The low end rumbles and sustains creating a warm dark drone above which little squalls of tinkling melodies swirl and soar. The main melody is quite subtle, being that it is created by hundreds of notes together, a lot like looking at a picture too close, so all you see are dots and lines, but as you step back, a picture begins to take shape. This is indeed lovely, and mournful and rich with emotion, while Melnyk's other pieces are more abstract and serve more as abstract and meditative, Galadriel definitely seems to have a narrative, and listening from start to finish, one definitely feels like a story was told, life and love and loss and hope and death and forgiveness all somehow represented in tiny little piano pixels. So totally fantastic.It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Song Of Galadriel"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRRemnants Of A Man / The Fountain(Bandura) cd-r 16.98This is the fourth record we've reviewed from Lubomyr Melnyk, pianist and inventor of the Continuous Music technique. A customer suggest we check him out describing him as sounding like three Terry Riley records being played at once. And it does. And it's amazing. Anyone who owns any of the other three will most likely want this one too. It's definitely similar as are all the pieces utilizing Melnyk's technique, but it has its own unique sound and arrangement that makes it just as special as any of the other recordings we've had. And as with many things we just can't get enough.For those of you who missed the titles we already listed or are new to the AQ list, here's a little info about Melnyk and his amazing technique:In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. At once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away.Just re-reading that gets us excited all over again. This music is indeed amazing and incredibly unique. A dizzying swirl of solo piano. So dense and deep it doesn't sound like it could possibly be coming from just two pianos. It's almost like someone took a million pianos, removed every note from each piano, placed them in some sort of giant container, shook it up, and then dumped all the notes over our heads. But somehow, the notes fall in perfectly predetermined patterns creating impossibly complex melodies and totally breathtakingly lovely textures and arrangements."Remnants Of A Man" was recorded in Stockholm in 1985 and is probably the least abstract and most directly dramatic piece we've heard. Beneath the flurries of high notes are huge resounding minor key chords. So dark and ominous. Within the piece is included a direct melodic reference to Beethoven, a short bit from his 9th symphony, Melnyk's tribute to Beethoven and his unhappy life. In fact the piece is themed around the futility of love, and you can totally hear it in the notes. Sad and sorrowful, intense and so emotional."The Fountain" is more of what we might consider traditional Melnyk, the cascade of notes composed to sound like the water of a fountain. And unlike most of his pieces, the first half of "The Fountain" is performed without the sustain pedal depressed, which means the notes are dry and there are no drawn out overtones, it's remarkable to hear the complexity of performance and composition. Almost like looking up into a sky full or raindrops or snowflakes.The final track "Niche" is an excerpt from a longer piece and is an example of solo piano in the Continuous Mode, a glistening, sparkling, shimmering world of lighter than air melodies, gentle drifts of notes, cobwebby tangles of delicate melody, completely effervescent and dreamlike. Awesome.Lots of super technical liner notes as always, with a brief history of Melnyk and the Continuous Music technique. Be sure to check out Wave-Lox, The Voice Of Trees and the Legend And Song Of Galadriel too!
MPEG Stream: "Remnants Of A Man"MPEG Stream: "The Fountain"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRThe Lund-St. Petri Symphony(Bandura) 2cd-r 32.00It's been a while since we've heard from pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, master and creator of the Continuous Music technique, a playing style that involves incredible dexterity, the player creating swirling flurries of notes, in fact, Melnyk holds the record for most notes played per second! But as we've mentioned in past reviews, Continuous Music is no mere gimmick, Melnyk uses his technique to create dense shifting soundscapes, almost like a 20th Century Classical Oval, notes and melodies constantly in flux, dizzying and dreamy, a massive shape shifting organic whole, that seems to constantly change shape and tone and timbre. But the music of Melnyk is not difficult listening, just the opposite. His music is serene and hypnotic, mesmerizing and gorgeous. You can read way more about Melnyk and his technique in some of the other reviews, but needless to say, every new release is a thrill. And yes, it's another cd-r, but according to Melnyk and the label, there are so many pieces, that they'd rather make them all accessible, instead of making 1000 copies of just one. Who are we to argue? Besides, there's the fact that aQuarius is one of the only places in the world you can get Melnyk records.Anyway, The Lund-St. Petri Symphony is another example of Melnyk's incredible skill and his deft arranging. This piece, originally composed and performed on organ, is recorded here on solo and double piano and is another shimmery expanse of Continuous music, with Melnyk sustaining a speed of 11-14 notes in each hand for the entire duration of the piece! What's even crazier, is it was meant to be played on THREE pianos (or organs), but was never recorded due to the fact that according to Melnyk, that much sound would not translate to modern recording techniques. There were plans to record the third part and release it as a separate lp so folks with two turntables could experience it in all its 3 piano glory, but it hardly matters, even on one piano, the sound is stirring. Minor key and melancholy, the notes glisten and glimmer, the melodies dense and ever shifting, the whole thing so completely entrancing. If you can imagine Pop Ambient music being created with just pianos, it would probably sound something like this.As always, WAY recommended, this one only available at AQ as far as we know, and limited (maybe only 50 copies?). You like Oval, Eno, new age, Pop Ambient, or just wondered what it would sound like to hear 10 or 12 'normal' piano players all playing the same piece simultaneously, well, a little like this. Divine!
MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 1"MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 2"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRThe Voice Of Trees(Bandura) cd-r 16.98The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site, because while The Voice Of Trees employs similar technique, the results are quite different.The Voice Of Trees is a piece for 3 tubas and 2 pianos, composed and performed to accompany a dance performance by the Kilina Cremona Dance Company. In the liner notes it states that since NO other piano player has the skill to play Melnyk's compositions, he had to pretape on of the piano parts and play the other live. And this is a live recording, so if you listen very closely you can sometimes hear the feet of the dancers. This piece also holds the distinction of being composed partially in "Geometric Form" a type of musical composition invented by Melnyk (after the works of Russian philosopher Ouspensky) where musical events are dictated by mathematics, geometry and the Fourth Dimension (!?). Woah! But fear not, you don't need a physics degree to sit back, close your eyes and let this loveliness carry you right off.The focus is still Melnyk's Continuous Music, a flurry of notes like leaves carried on the wind, but it's the tuba that adds an unlikely slant to the proceedings. By themselves, the two pianos are a hypnotic drone, dense and slowly moving and constantly shifting, totally lovely. But the tuba adds structure, and its low mournful melodies add a certain morose quality to the piece, and make it sound classical and more like some abstract epic post-rock, played on piano and tuba. Sound weird, and it is, but it's also so gorgeous, and so intense. The piano is dizzying, the listener sort of drifts back and forth from letting the notes blend together into a swoonsome whole, and seeing every note, trying to make sense of the thousands of notes, trying to understand the patterns and the composition. And that's where the tubas come in, allowing the pianos to act as a lush backdrop, while the tubas moan and croon their lonesome melodies. Amazing.It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "One"MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRThree Solo Pieces(Unseen Worlds) cd 16.98We've long been fans of Ukrainian pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk. Have a quick look at the aQ site for much gushing, and a way more detailed of Melnyk and his 'continuous music' method of piano playing, which he invented, and involves the sustain pedal continuously depressed, turning Melnyk's rapid clusters of notes into gorgeous almost psychedelic sounding flurries, lush swirling clouds of sounds, which are once again in full effect here, which by the title, you can surmise does consist of three solo pieces, just Melnyk and a piano. Proper Melnyk releases are a rarity, since he decided long ago, that with so many releases, he would press up cd-r's, as a way to affordably have all of them available. But recently, Melnyk has been getting much more attention, having released a fantastic collaboration with James Blackshaw, and having several proper releases on actual labels. Three Solo Pieces is as gorgeous as you might expect, the opener "Marginal Invitation" is brooding and melancholic, the playing measured and minimal, at least until a few minutes in, when the sound seems to transform, and suddenly, the listener is surrounded by warm, lustrous notes, and constantly shifting textures and melodies, the most dramatic part being where Melnyk abruptly lets up on the sustain pedal, and the notes suddenly snap back into a staccato framework, the notes still rapid fire, a different sort of swirling arrangement, dizzying and dramatic, Melnyk, slipping easily back and forth between the two. "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life" is atypically atonal, sounding much more '20th century' than most of his pieces, but no less compelling, a continuous cascade of notes and melodies, a blurred swirl of sound, tense and intense, the angular feel adding a sinister vibe to the proceedings, but before you know it, the sound is transformed, gradually shedding the more atonal elements, until it's downright lovely, before those dissonant notes gradually creep in again. The 18 minute closer begins like some famous classical piece you just can't put your finger on, the magic of Melnyk's mastery, conjuring up a piece at once utterly unique, but at the same time, one that sounds so familiar, the arrangement ingenious, as the low notes seem to be gradually shed over the course of the song, upper register melodies gradually coming to the fore, until finally, it almost sounds like music box melodies, dizzyingly repetitive, and mesmerizingly trancelike and tranquil. Fantastic!!
MPEG Stream: "Marginal Invitiation"MPEG Stream: "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRThree Solo Pieces(Unseen Worlds) lp 23.00We've long been fans of Ukrainian pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk. Have a quick look at the aQ site for much gushing, and a way more detailed of Melnyk and his 'continuous music' method of piano playing, which he invented, and involves the sustain pedal continuously depressed, turning Melnyk's rapid clusters of notes into gorgeous almost psychedelic sounding flurries, lush swirling clouds of sounds, which are once again in full effect here, which by the title, you can surmise does consist of three solo pieces, just Melnyk and a piano. Proper Melnyk releases are a rarity, since he decided long ago, that with so many releases, he would press up cd-r's, as a way to affordably have all of them available. But recently, Melnyk has been getting much more attention, having released a fantastic collaboration with James Blackshaw, and having several proper releases on actual labels. Three Solo Pieces is as gorgeous as you might expect, the opener "Marginal Invitation" is brooding and melancholic, the playing measured and minimal, at least until a few minutes in, when the sound seems to transform, and suddenly, the listener is surrounded by warm, lustrous notes, and constantly shifting textures and melodies, the most dramatic part being where Melnyk abruptly lets up on the sustain pedal, and the notes suddenly snap back into a staccato framework, the notes still rapid fire, a different sort of swirling arrangement, dizzying and dramatic, Melnyk, slipping easily back and forth between the two. "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life" is atypically atonal, sounding much more '20th century' than most of his pieces, but no less compelling, a continuous cascade of notes and melodies, a blurred swirl of sound, tense and intense, the angular feel adding a sinister vibe to the proceedings, but before you know it, the sound is transformed, gradually shedding the more atonal elements, until it's downright lovely, before those dissonant notes gradually creep in again. The 18 minute closer begins like some famous classical piece you just can't put your finger on, the magic of Melnyk's mastery, conjuring up a piece at once utterly unique, but at the same time, one that sounds so familiar, the arrangement ingenious, as the low notes seem to be gradually shed over the course of the song, upper register melodies gradually coming to the fore, until finally, it almost sounds like music box melodies, dizzyingly repetitive, and mesmerizingly trancelike and tranquil. Fantastic!!
MPEG Stream: "Marginal Invitiation"MPEG Stream: "Corrosions On The Surface Of Life"

MELNYK, LUBOMYRVocalizes & Antiphons(Bandura) cd-r 16.98

MELNYK, LUBOMYRWave-Lox(Bandura) cd-r 16.98This AQ fave finally back in stock!We had never heard of Lubomyr Melnyk, nor his 'Continuous Music method' before. But the more we learn the more we fall in love with this iconoclastic modern innovator. In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. Someone described Wave-Lox as three Terry Riley playing at once, which is not that far off the mark. Or imagine a thousand George Winstons spinning weightless in space, notes everywhere careening wildly, but with some strangely indescribable pattern. The sound of Wave-Lox is at once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away. Wave-Lox is actually a piece for 2 pianos (giving you an idea of the density and number of notes we're talking about here) and 3 contra-bass, which offer the same sonic complexities as the piano, making a rich sonic stew even more deliriously dense. It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing. We currently have about 10 different titles in stock, and while Wave-Lox is our favorite so far, one of the others features Melnyk on piano accompanied by multiple tubas! So drop us an email if you're interested in any of the other titles, but for now revel in the beautiful beautiful music of Wave-Lox!
MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 1"MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 2"

MELOY, COLIN33 1/3 Series: Let It Be(Continuum) book 9.95A match made in heaven. Arguably the best Replacements record, here exposed and examined and dissected and FAWNED over by Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy, who waxes lyrical (and you can imagine just how lyrical based on the elaborate wordplay of his lyrics). SO GOOD.

MELOY, COLINColin Meloy Sings Live(Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98

MELT-BANANA13 Hedgehogs (MxBx Singles 1994-1999)(A-Zap) cd 13.98In the bizarre musical world of Japan's Melt Banana, seven inch singles are hedgehogs, and MB's got a whole mess of em, most WAY out of print and long unavailable. So finally, all of these long sought after hedgehogs, all released between 1994 and 1999, have been gathered up, gussied up, digitized and released on one single compact disc. 13 Hedgehogs featuring all of MB's tracks from the singles "Hedgehog", "It's In The Pillcase", "Untitled (Piano One)", "Eleventh" and "Dead Spex" as well as their tracks from splits with God Is My Co-Pilot, Discordance Axis, Pencilneck, Target Shoppers, Stilluppsteypa, Plainfield, Xerobot, and Killout Trash. Phew. 56 tracks of maniacal squealing and squeaking, stop-start, ultra dense, mega complex confusional punk / grind / pop / whatthefuck! So ridiculous and so totally amazing!
MPEG Stream: "So Unfilial Rule"MPEG Stream: "Buddhism Core"MPEG Stream: "Dead Spex"MPEG Stream: "Last Finger Split"MPEG Stream: "Bad Gut Missed Fist"

MELT-BANANA666(Level Plane) 6" 3.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.SUPER LIMITED 6" (that's right 6", not 7"!!) from one of our favorite Japanese aggro-spazz-math-grind-pop bands. Don't dawdle, these are gonna go fast.

MELT-BANANABambi's Dilemma(A-Zap) cd 13.98Geeze! Can't believe it, this must be the most melodic, "normal" (ahem) album from Japan's Melt-Banana yet, but it's still ALSO totally spastic and unhinged and extreme. Actually the more melodic, non-hyperspeed elements here make the other stuff all the more insane sounding. There's (only!) 18 caffeinated tracks on this disc, chock-a-block with bug zapper guitars, thrashing drums, and yelping vox, of course. But also: catchy hooks, sing-a-long choruses? Yes. It's been four long years since their previous album, Cell-Scape, and we guess we'd forgotten just how listenable that one was, surprising us at the time too. Melt-Banana had taken their trademark manic Boredomsey hardcore sound and tamed it just a bit. Well they do that here too, turning in a speedy, spasmodic pop-punk masterpiece that sounds something like the Ramones or Green Day bouncing off the walls in a bizarre experiment somehow involving chipmunks, crack cocaine, and computers... ok, dunno what that means either. But the point is, this is making us crazy in a good way, it's as if the more "conventional" Melt-Banana becomes, the more paradoxically disturbing they really are. And if you really want pure old school M-B HC noisiness, well there's a batch of shorter, seizure-like songs on the second half of the disc (tracks 11-17) that should do the trick. Well worth the wait.
MPEG Stream: "Cracked Plaster Cast"MPEG Stream: "Cat Brain Land"MPEG Stream: "One Drop, One Life"

MELT-BANANABambi's Dilemma(A-Zap) lp 10.98Geeze! Can't believe it, this must be the most melodic, "normal" (ahem) album from Japan's Melt-Banana yet, but it's still ALSO totally spastic and unhinged and extreme. Actually the more melodic, non-hyperspeed elements here make the other stuff all the more insane sounding. There's (only!) 18 caffeinated tracks on this disc, chock-a-block with bug zapper guitars, thrashing drums, and yelping vox, of course. But also: catchy hooks, sing-a-long choruses? Yes. It's been four long years since their previous album, Cell-Scape, and we guess we'd forgotten just how listenable that one was, surprising us at the time too. Melt-Banana had taken their trademark manic Boredomsey hardcore sound and tamed it just a bit. Well they do that here too, turning in a speedy, spasmodic pop-punk masterpiece that sounds something like the Ramones or Green Day bouncing off the walls in a bizarre experiment somehow involving chipmunks, crack cocaine, and computers... ok, dunno what that means either. But the point is, this is making us crazy in a good way, it's as if the more "conventional" Melt-Banana becomes, the more paradoxically disturbing they really are. And if you really want pure old school M-B HC noisiness, well there's a batch of shorter, seizure-like songs on the second half of the disc (tracks 11-17) that should do the trick. Well worth the wait.
MPEG Stream: "Cracked Plaster Cast"MPEG Stream: "Cat Brain Land"MPEG Stream: "One Drop, One Life"

MELT-BANANACell-scape(A-Zap) cd 13.98A new record from spazz-prog-punk rockers Melt-Banana and while the overall sound is not all that different, they continue to get better and better, and dare we say more listenable with each record. Less ear splitting high end skree this time around, and a much warmer production, as well as some really catchy songs and great riffs make this possibly the best MB record yet. Plus there's a bunch of strange midtempo 'breakdowns' as well as some bizarre production and electronic fuckery that add even more dimension to MB's already unique sonic palette. But fear not, still present are the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard guitars and the hyperspeed chipmunk vocals and the spazzy rhythms, it all just sounds much more refined. Allan thinks the new Melt-Banana sounds like a bizarre hybrid of three other records on this weeks list: the Simply Saucer, the Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the Cats And Kittens cds. Which is actually not all that far off the mark!
MPEG Stream: "Shield For Your Eyes, A Beast In The Well On Your Hand"MPEG Stream: "A Dreamer Who Is Too Weak To Face Up To"MPEG Stream: "Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold"

MELT-BANANACell-scape(A-Zap) lp 9.98THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.Now on vinyl! A new record from spazz-prog-punk rockers Melt-Banana and while the overall sound is not all that different, they continue to get better and better, and dare we say more listenable with each record. Less ear splitting high end skree this time around, and a much warmer production, as well as some really catchy songs and great riffs make this possibly the best MB record yet. Plus there's a bunch of strange midtempo 'breakdowns' as well as some bizarre production and electronic fuckery that add even more dimension to MB's already unique sonic palette. But fear not, still present are the fingernails-on-a-chalkboard guitars and the hyperspeed chipmunk vocals and the spazzy rhythms, it all just sounds much more refined. Allan thinks the new Melt-Banana sounds like a bizarre hybrid of three other records on this weeks list: the Simply Saucer, the Agoraphobic Nosebleed and the Cats And Kittens cds. Which is actually not all that far off the mark!
MPEG Stream: "Shield For Your Eyes, A Beast In The Well On Your Hand"MPEG Stream: "A Dreamer Who Is Too Weak To Face Up To"MPEG Stream: "Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold"